Libya Part 2 All Along: Obama signs covert US support for Syria’s Terrorists

The Nobel Peace Laureate and his duplicitous policies serves the very same people who are behind every U.S. President

August 2, 2012 (TSR) – US President Barack Obama has signed a secret order allowing the CIA and other American agencies to support rebels seeking to overthrow the Assad regime, a US government source told Reuters.

Obama reportedly gave the order, known as an intelligence “finding”, earlier this year. The presidential finding also provides for US collaboration with a secret command center operated by Turkey and its allies.

The full extent of the assistance the “finding” allows the CIA to give the Syrian rebels is unclear. It is also unknown precisely when Obama signed the order.

The Nobel Peace Laureate and his duplicitous policies serves the very same people who are behind every U.S. President

The Obama administration has been open about providing non-military support to the Syrian opposition. On Wednesday, the State Department said it had allotted a total of $25 million for “non-lethal” assistance to the Free Syrian Army. Some of that money may be used to buy communications devices such as encrypted radios, a US official said. The State Department also said the United States has set aside $64 million in humanitarian aid for the Syrian people.

Last year, Obama also signed an initial “finding” authorizing US support for Libyan rebels seeking to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi.

Watch the full interview with Pepe Escobar on RT

Also on Wednesday, the US Treasury confirmed it had granted authorization for Washington’s representative of the Free Syrian Army to conduct financial transactions on behalf of the rebel group. Reports that the Syrian Support Group had been allowed to do so first appeared last week.

The report of Obama’s authorization for covert rebel support comes amidst continued fighting between Syrian government troops and rebels over control of Aleppo, the country’s economic capital. Thousands of people have fled the city, while the government and rebels continue to release conflicting reports on the extent of their control over the city.

Meanwhile, there have been reports that the Free Syrian Army managed to obtain nearly two dozen surface-to-air missiles. While a Free Syrian Army representative denied those reports, he also said the rebels were preparing another surprise for Assad’s forces.

Senior US officials have also been ratcheting up their rhetoric against Assad. On Monday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta suggested that Assad “get the hell out” if he wants to protect himself and his family. A draft UN resolution calling for Assad to relinquish power in favor of a transitional government is also set to be voted on by the General Assembly on Friday. The document would deplore the Security Council for failing to act; a not-so-covert swipe at Russia’s and China’s continued panning of Security Council resolutions deemed to be one-sided.

Brian Becker, director of the ANSWER anti-war coalition, believes the revelation of Obama’s order doesn’t represent any shift in terms of US strategy towards Syria.

“All that does is reveal that the so-called diplomacy, the so-called looking for a negotiated settlement is a fraud – that the diplomacy is, in fact, a form of perjury,” he told RT. “The reality is that the US government – the Obama administration with the Pentagon and the CIA – has been neck-deep coordinating military operations to overthrow a sovereign government in Syria.”

He noted that there would have been no civil war going on in Syria if not for foreign intervention.

“The decisive factor in the equation for civil war is US intervention,” he said. “And would say, frankly, the Obama administration is guilty of war crimes against the Syrian people having cynically manipulated the situation. They have the blood of the Syrian people on their hands.”

‘Secret-order leak a smokescreen’

Asia Times Online correspondent Pepe Escobar told RT that the leak’s timing was intended to distort the true nature of Washington’s covert operations on the ground in Syria.

“This intelligence finding signed by Obama – that’s the code for a secret order – this was signed six months ago. So the fact that Reuters has only been allowed now to report about it proves that there have been high deliberations in Washington: ‘should we let people know about what they already know?’”

“In fact, the Washington Post two weeks ago had already reported about it, and when the CIA wants to leak something in the US, they usually go to the Washington Post. The CIA and Mossad, on the ground [in Syria], side by side working with the Qataris, the Turks, the Saudis and a swarm of jihadis coming from everywhere, but especially from across the border in Iraq,” he argues.

Escobar says the leak was intended to make it look as though Washington was leading the Syrian campaign from behind the scenes, when in fact the US is “leading from the front lines alongside al-Qaeda-style Jihadists, Qatari intelligence, and Turkish logistics.”

He says the Western drive against Syria follows the breakdown in the international order caused by the 2011 Libyan intervention.

“There’s no semblance of international law since what was decided in Libya last year. The maneuvering and the wording of UN resolution 1973, authorizing war – a no-fly zone was actually war – against Libya. That was the end of international law as we know it. Nation-states don’t matter anymore. If you are a neo-colonial power, like Britain or France, or an empire like the US, you can trample on nations’ sovereignty anywhere, anyhow, anyplace, and this is exactly what’s happening. That’s why Russia has been opposed to it from the start, because Moscow sees that as the end of the sovereignty of nation-states,” he says.

He added that Syria’s disintegration into a weak – or failed – state is part of Israel’s long-term designs on Iran.

“The battle of Aleppo could become an extended [rerun of] Lebanon in the 1970s. This is the ‘Lebanonization ‘of whole tracts of Northern Syria, in fact. And this, by the way, is the Israeli strategy. Israel wants a ‘Lebanonized’ and ‘Somalized’ [Syria], like the new Somalia in Libya; a very weak country with sectarian strife… an overextended army, and of course, innocuous against Israel. So this means opening the way for an Israeli attack against Iran in the next few months or perhaps in 2013.”

The Free Syrian Army has reportedly acquired portable surface-to-air missiles to use against government jets and helicopters. The news comes amid stirrings within the FSA that Al Qaeda fighters in their ranks are “a threat to their revolution.”

The Free Syrian Army has added nearly two-dozen surface-to-air (SAM) launchers to their arsenal, NBC reported on Tuesday. “The rebel sources tell that for the first time in this conflict the Free Syrian Army has been armed with nearly two dozen shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles that came in from Turkey. The rebels hope that this is just the first batch, and say their effects will be felt soon,” the TV network’s chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel.

Engel said the rebels hope the portable missile launchers will spell an end to the as-yet-unchallenged air superiority of pro-Assad troops in the battle for Aleppo.

Pictures of launchers shown in the report resemble the Soviet-era Strela portable SAM launcher. The image, if true, could suggest a link between the Syrian rebels and Libya, whose arsenals were ransacked last year after the fall of the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

Some 10,000-15,000 portable SAM launchers were alleged to have disappeared from Libyan military storehouses.

Several countries, including Persian Gulf monarchies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have been recently calling to supply the FSA with surface-to-air missile launchers.

Last month, US officials warned against arming the Syrian rebels with SAMs, since the weapons could be used to take down civilian passenger jets.

During the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan, the US supplied the Mujahedeen with then-state-of-the-art Stinger anti-air missiles. Afghans used them to down 18 Mi-24 Soviet assault helicopters. But when America invaded Afghanistan in 2001, Afghan Mujahedeen deployed American Stinger missiles against the US Air Force.

Soviet-era Strela-2 portable SAM launcher (Image from wikipedia.org)

Al-Qaeda ‘trying to highjack the Syrian revolution’

Syrian rebel fighter Abu Khuder says that his group is battling the Assad regime in close cooperation with the FSA, and consults with their military council on a daily basis, according to the Guardian.

Khuder, a battalion commander for Solidarity Front, Al-Qaeda’s main arm in Syria, revealed in the interview that “we have clear instructions from our [al-Qaida] leadership that if the FSA need our help we should give it. We help them with IEDs and car bombs. Our main talent is in the bombing operations.”

The commander said he joined Al-Qaeda because he was “frustrated” with the lack of discipline within the ranks of FSA fighters. Al Jazeera has also reported that jihadists have established military camps within Syria.

The Guardian claims that scores of ‘freedom fighters’ are flocking to these camps from nearby Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and remote locales like Bangladesh, Chechnya, Belgium and the UK. Radical Islamists have already started to employ symbols like the black flag to distinguish their forces from the rest of the FSA.

Radical Islamists have been participating in most military conflicts in the Middle East for the last three decades, and it seems, they have now shifted their efforts to Syria. But not all Syrian opposition fighters are happy with it.

Al-Qaeda militants “are stealing the revolution from us and they are working for the day that comes after,” one FSA fighter said.

Duterte will not purchase anything that would just spread violence among Filipinos and pay unneeded expensive rifles when there are cheaper offers.

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